Enslaved and freed…

Today, down in the 3PP, five men experienced the feeling of being overwhelmed. We began the workout as we always do, with my seconds pro timer staring at us on my ipad. I love and loathe that damn timer – it’s so helpful and yet so hurtful. Moving on.

As today’s workout began we quickly realized we couldn’t keep up with the work load. The segment timer was hitting zero before we had completely the required repetitions. We began to work without rest going directly from one completed assignment to whatever the timer told us was up next. The timer was overwhelming us with more work than humanly possible. We felt kinda like the scene from I Love Lucy on the conveyer belt. Yes, I’m old…

Anyway, I allowed this to go on for awhile. After about five minutes (seemed much longer) I called a timeout. I told the team to skip a set. We caught our breath and when the timer beeped for the next segment, we got back after it. We didn’t quit; we simply took a few seconds to regroup. We told the timer to shove off, I guess. Felt kinda freeing to ignore it too.

About fifteen minutes later, we fell behind again. The timer was ticking down to zero and we still had reps to go. Everybody kept going and slowly picked up the pace. The breathing grew louder as set after set we caught up with the timer. We fought through this one because we could. We called a timeout earlier because we knew we could not.

You, most likely, will experience being overwhelmed today in your world of work/life. We live in a noisy world with lots of timers telling us we’re behind, we’ll never catch up, the texts will never stop coming, and the deadlines cannot be pushed. We live in a world where overwhelmed people oversee operations and overwhelm others at seemingly every opportunity or occasion. Overwhelmed yet?

Do you need to call a timeout? Do you sense the team is picking up the pace? Do you need to go outside for a walk? Today, during the rigors of the 3P, I was reminded of how easy we are enslaved by the very technology we created to free us. Enslaved and freed by technology. Funny, huh.

Slow down and reflect. You’ve got some choices to make, don’t you…